Ordinary Grace (22 page)

other disappeared after dinner and only a short while before dark. She said she was going for a walk. My grandfather, who along with Liz had taken to eating with us regularly,

had asked where she was headed. They’d all been sitting on the front porch, my parents and Liz and my grandfather, trying to get some benefit from a cooling breeze that had blown in with the evening. I’d been lying in the yard grass watching the light dissolve from the sky above the valley. My mother had said, Around the block. And got up and just like that she was gone before anyone could object or offer companionship. Afterward my grandparents and my father talked about her. They were worried. Hell, we all were.

When she didn’t come back by hard dark my father left in the Packard and my grandfather left in his big Buick and they went looking. Liz stayed with us. She kept near the telephone in case someone called with information. Jake had been upstairs all evening working on one of his model airplanes and after the men drove off he came down and when I told him what was going on he said that he’d seen Mother walking along the railroad tracks headed toward the trestle outside town.

He shrugged and looked chagrinned and answered, She was just walking.
Along the tracks? Have you ever seen her walk along the tracks? Jesus.
I hurried to the kitchen and told Liz and then I said I would go and find Mother.
No, Liz replied. I don’t want you on those railroad tracks at night.
I’ll take a flashlight and I’ll be careful.
I’ll g-g-g-go with him, Jake stuttered and I figured he must be pretty scared.
Liz clearly wasn’t happy with the idea but I pointed out that if somebody didn’t go soon who knew what might happen and she gave in.
We both brought flashlights though once we were out of the Flats they were almost unnecessary because the moon had risen nearly full before us and it was easy to see our way along the railbed.
She’s ok-k-kay, Jake kept repeating.
And I repeated to him, She’s fine. She’s fine.
In this way we reassured ourselves because Ariel’s death had shattered any sense of normality, any firm sense that what any future moment held was predictable. If God could allow Ariel to die—allow little Bobby Cole to be so gruesomely slaughtered as well—then Mother who was not at all on good terms with the Almighty was, I feared, stepping directly into harm’s way.
Moonlight turned the polished surface of each rail silver and we followed the tracks through the dark all the way to the trestle where we found our mother sitting above the flow of the Minnesota River. As soon as we saw her, I turned to Jake and said, Go back and tell Liz where we are. I’ll keep Mom here and make sure she’s okay.
Jake looked back at the long dark tunnel of the night between us and town. He said, Alone?
Yeah, stupid. One of us has to go and I need to stay here.
Why c-c-c-can’t I stay?
What if Mom decides to jump or something? You want to go in after her? Go on. Hurry.
He thought about arguing some more but finally accepted his duty and headed back following the jerky finger of his flashlight beam.
My greatest fear was that a train might at any minute come roaring toward us and, with Mother in the middle of the trestle in God knew what mental state, I wouldn’t be able to get her to safety in time. The good thing was that it was night and the headlight of an engine ought to be visible a long while before it reached the river. I crept out onto the railroad bridge. Mother didn’t look my way and I wasn’t certain if she even realized I was there. But when I was a few steps from reaching her she said to me, This is the place isn’t it, Frankie?
I stood beside her and looked down where she looked. The river below us was all moonlight. I said, Yes.
What did you see?
Her dress. Her hair. That’s all.
She looked up at me and I saw thin iridescent trails down her cheeks and I realized she’d been crying and still was.
I used to swim in this river, she said. When I was a girl. There’s a deep clear pool a couple of miles downstream where Cottonwood Creek comes in. Have you ever been there?
Sure, I said.
Sit down. Here. She patted the crossties next to where she sat and I did as she asked.
I never thought of the river as dangerous, Frankie. But you found someone else dead here.
Yeah, the itinerant.
Itinerant. She shook her head faintly. Someone’s entire life reduced to a single word. And little Bobby Cole, didn’t he .. . ?
Yeah. Him too.
It’s pretty here, she said. You wouldn’t suspect all that death, would you? Do you and Jake come here often?
We used to. Not anymore. I think we should go home, Mom.
Are you worried about me, Frankie? I know everyone else is.
You kind of scare me sometimes these days.
I scare myself.
Come home, Mom.
See, it’s like this. I can’t talk to your father. I’m too angry with him. I’m angry with everybody.
With God?
Frankie, there is no God. I could jump right now into that river and there would be no divine hand reaching out to save me. It would simply be the end.
Not for me or Jake or Dad.
My point exactly. There is no God to care about us. We’ve got only ourselves and each other.
She reached her arm around me and pulled me gently against her and I remembered how when I was small and afraid she’d done the same thing.
But your father, Frankie, he cares more about God than he does about us. And to me that’s like saying he cares more about the air and I hate him for that.
I wanted to tell her about the night I’d seen him cry in Gus’s arms at the altar. And I wanted to tell her about his sermon the next day and how from that air she faulted him for caring about he’d somehow taken remarkable strength. Instead I just leaned into her and felt her weeping and looked up at the moon and listened to the frogs along the river’s edge and then I heard voices coming from the dark in the direction of town and I saw flashlight beams approaching along the railroad bed.
Damn, my mother said quietly. Saint Nathan to the rescue. She looked at me, looked me straight in the eye. Will you do something for me, Frankie, something that you can’t tell your father about?
The lights were not far down the tracks and in only a couple of minutes they would reach us. I had to decide and decide quickly. She seemed so alone, my mother. And because God and my father wouldn’t listen I figured I had to.
I said, Yes.

In the dead of night I rose. When I was getting ready for bed I’d folded my clothes on a chair and because I was not known for my neatness Jake had watched me with suspicion. But it had been a strange evening and everything was strange those days and so Jake didn’t question me.

I grabbed my clothes and went into the hallway where the door to my mother’s bedroom was closed. I wondered if she was awake listening for the sound of my leaving. I crept down the stairs careful to avoid the steps I knew would cry my presence to my father who had taken to sleeping on the sofa in the living room. In the kitchen I saw by moonlight that the hands of the wall clock read two-thirty-five. I slipped out the screen door into the yard where I put on my pants and shirt and socks and sneakers. I folded my pajamas and carried them to the garage and put them on a shelf beside an oilcan. I rolled my bicycle out, climbed on, and followed the road that was milk white in the moonlight into town.

I’d lived other places before New Bremen, other towns where my father had been the pastor, and although I got to know them quickly and discovered easily what was special and fun about them none had been as close to my heart as New Bremen. Ariel’s death had changed that. The town became alien to me and at night especially threatening and I biked each deserted street with a sense that menace was all around me. The unlit house windows were dark eyes watching. Awful things lurked in the shadows cast by the moon. The whole two miles to the Heights I pumped hard on the pedals as if chased by demons.

The Brandt estate was a football field of grass cut even as carpeting and set here and there with lush flower garden enclaves all of it tended by a groundskeeper, a man named Petrov whose son Ivan was in my class at school. A tall wrought-iron fence surrounded the entire property and the only way in was through a gate opening onto a long drive that led to the house. Ornately crafted into the iron of the gate was a great wrought-iron letter
B
. Two enormous stone pillars flanked the entrance and as I drew up before the gate I saw in the bright moonlight that a word had been spray-painted in black on one of the pillars:
Murdrer
.

I stood before the gate and stared at that angry misspelling. A can of spray paint lay on the ground not far away. I looked down the street which ran empty through the ghostly light. The houses on the far side were large and sat upon substantial properties though none even began to approach the extent of the Brandt estate. They all stood completely dark.

I continued a hundred yards farther to a place where a big maple grew outside the fence but with some branches that arched over the wrought iron. I laid my bike against the trunk, shinnied up the tree, scooted out along the thickest branch, and dropped into the Brandts’ yard. Across a broad lake of moonlight I raced toward the house that was all white stone and white columns and had been built in the days when New Bremen was young. I veered toward the garage, a converted carriage house. Parked on the drive in front was Karl’s little red sports car.

I did as my mother had asked then I sprinted back to the fence. Without the tree to help me I had some difficulty scaling the wrought iron but I finally made it over and leaped onto my bike and pumped hard toward home.

I hadn’t gone far and was just turning a sharp curve in the road that led downhill toward the main part of town when headlights from an oncoming car blinded me. I swerved quickly and almost fell off my bike. I stopped and the car stopped too. I heard a door open and close. Because of the headlight glare, I couldn’t see who it was. Then Doyle’s big shadow fell over me and I figured I was dead.

Got a call someone was messing around the Brandt place, he said. Why am I not surprised it’s you? Off the bike, Frank, and let’s go.
I followed Doyle to the back of his cruiser. He opened the trunk and said, Put your bike in there. When I’d done what he asked, he pointed toward the passenger side and said, Get in.
We continued up the road to the gate of the Brandt mansion where Doyle’s headlights illuminated the graffiti. He looked over at me but said nothing. He got out and picked up the can of spray paint and got back in. He turned his cruiser around and we descended slowly from the Heights. For a long time Doyle said nothing, just drove with his wrist draped over the top of his steering wheel.The radio of his cruiser squawked now and then but he didn’t bother to pick up his mic.
I sat silent beside him, feeling doomed. I saw my father coming down to the jail in the middle of the night in just the way he’d come for Gus and I could already see the look on his face.
At the junction with Main Street, instead of turning toward the town square and the jail, Doyle turned toward the Flats.
He said, A lot of folks around here, they think the Brandts are kind of big for their britches. You understand what I’m saying?
Yes, sir.
What happened to your sister, it’s got people upset. The Brandt boy, I’m betting he goes scot-free. I’m sorry to say that, Frank, but that’s the way the world works. The rich, they walk on stilts and the rest of us, we just crawl around under them in the dirt. So what do you do? Well, you spray-paint the truth where the world can see it, I guess that’s one thing. Rub their noses a little in the stink of what they’ve done and who they are, huh? He smiled and laughed quietly.
I thought I hated the Brandts but the way Doyle talked made me feel uncomfortable, like we were both part of some larger darker conspiracy, and I wasn’t sure I wanted that. Still it was better than being taken to jail.
He pulled to a stop in front of our house and we got out and he opened the trunk so I could get my bike. He held up the can of spray paint I’d seen lying near the Brandts’ gate. I’ll keep this, if you don’t mind, he said. Dump it somewhere nobody’ll find it. Frank, this is between you and me, understand? You say a word to anyone, I’ll swear you’re a liar, we clear?
Yes, sir.
All right then. Get some sleep, kid.
He watched me lean my bicycle against the garage wall and then go quietly in the side door to the kitchen. Before I went upstairs to bed I looked out the front window and he was gone.

irst thing next morning the sheriff arrived. We were eating breakfast, all of us except my mother who was still in bed. My father answered the front door and the sheriff stepped inside.

We had some vandalism last night out at the Brandt home, Nathan. Somebody spray-painted those folks’ front gate. Wrote
Murderer
there. Except the vandal wasn’t too bright. Left out an
e
and spelled it
Murdrer.
But it’s pretty clear what the intent was.

That’s a shame, my father said.
I don’t suppose you or your family know anything about it. No. Why would we?
Didn’t figure as much but I’ve got to ask. The truth is it could be

Nothing like that. She just took a walk and didn’t tell any of us where she was going. It got a little late and we got a little worried.
Ah, the sheriff said. Must’ve heard it wrong. Then he looked past my father into our house the same way he’d looked past me a couple of days earlier. His eyes found me in the kitchen doorway and held on me in a way that made me believe he was certain who the vandal was. Is that all, Sheriff?
Yeah, I guess so. Just thought you ought to know.
He left and got into his car and drove away and when I turned back to the kitchen table Jake was sitting there looking at me in the same way the sheriff had. My father returned to the table and Jake didn’t say anything and we finished our breakfast.
Later in our room Jake said, Murdrer? You couldn’t even spell it right?
What are you talking about?
You know.
No, I don’t.
I wondered why you went to bed in your pajamas but got up wearing your underwear and T-shirt. You went to the Brandts’ last night, didn’t you?
You’re crazy.
I’m not. He sat there on his bed looking up at me but he didn’t look angry or worried. Why didn’t you take me?
I didn’t want you to get into trouble. Look, Jake, I was there but I didn’t paint that word.
What did you do?
Mom asked me to put an envelope on the windshield of Karl’s car.
What was in it?
I don’t know. She made me promise not to open it.
Who spray-painted the gate?
I don’t know. It was that way when I got there.
I was about to tell Jake the whole story when I heard the feisty growl of a little automobile engine and when I looked out the window Karl Brandt drove up in his sports car. Jake and I both went downstairs where our mother was finally up and eating some toast and drinking coffee. My father had gone to his office in the church but he must have seen Karl arrive because he came quickly home.
Karl knocked on the front screen door and I opened it. As he walked in, Dad bounded up the porch steps behind him. Karl looked like death. He stood in the house with his shoulders slumped and his eyes downcast and there came from him, as if it held an actual scent, the air of despair. My mother stepped in from the kitchen with her coffee in her hand. She didn’t seem surprised at all. Karl’s dark eyes lit briefly on each of us then settled at last on my mother. He held up the envelope which I recognized. Not a word passed between them yet my mother came forward and put her coffee cup on the dining room table, took the envelope, and walked to the living room. Karl followed her. The rest of us watched as if it was a silent play being performed. Mother sat down at the piano. She opened the envelope, took out a couple of sheets of music paper, settled them on the music rack above the keyboard, and began to play and to sing.
The song was
Unforgettable,
the greatest Nat King Cole standard. She played flawlessly and sang in a way that was like a pillow inviting you to rest all the weariness of your heart upon it. Karl had sung this same song with Ariel at the Senior Frolics in the spring, a duet that had brought down the house. We’d all been there and after I had heard them sing together I’d figured I knew pretty well what love was all about.
Karl Brandt stood with his hand on the piano and I thought if he hadn’t had that great instrument to lean against he might have collapsed. He’d always seemed to me to be old and mature and sophisticated but at that moment he looked like a child and like he was going to cry.
When my mother finished he whispered, I didn’t kill Ariel. I could never hurt Ariel.
I never thought for a moment that you did, Karl, my father replied.
Karl turned and said, Everyone else in town does. I can’t even leave the house anymore. Everyone stares at me like I’m a monster.
From where she sat on the piano bench my mother looked up at Karl and said, You got my daughter pregnant.
It wasn’t me, Karl said. I swear it wasn’t me.
You’re telling me my daughter slept around?
No. But I never slept with her.
That’s not what you told your friends.
That was just talk, Mrs. Drum.
Hateful, hurtful talk.
I know. I know. I wish I’d never said those things. But all the guys say them.
Then all the guys should be ashamed of themselves.
I didn’t kill her. I swear to God, I didn’t touch her.
We heard the pound of steps on the front porch and the hammer of a fist on our door and there were Mr. and Mrs. Brandt looking at us with their faces dark through the mesh of the screen.
My father let them in and Mrs. Brandt rushed to her son and put herself between him and my mother and said to Karl, You shouldn’t be here.
I had to tell them, he said.
You had to do nothing of the sort. You owe no one an explanation.
Oh, but he does, Julia.
Mrs. Brandt turned on my mother. He had nothing to do with your daughter’s death.
What about her pregnancy?
Or that.
He’s been telling two different stories, Julia.
I couldn’t believe how calm my mother seemed, how solid, like cold iron.
Mrs. Brandt said to her son, Karl, you go home and wait for us there. We’ll take care of this.
But they need to understand, he pleaded.
I told you, we’ll take care of this.
Go on home, Son, Axel Brandt said. He sounded tired and some of Karl’s despair was in his voice.
Karl slowly crossed the room, cowering, and I saw him in the same way the sheriff and Doyle must have seen him when they called him the Brandt boy. He reached the front door and paused a moment and I thought he was going to turn back and say something more. Instead he simply pushed out into the morning light. A minute later I heard the sound of his car pulling away.
Now, Julia Brandt said returning her attention to my mother. Is there something you want to say to me, Ruth?
Just one question, Julia: What are you afraid of?
What makes you think I’m afraid?
Because you’ve been hiding. Nathan and I have been trying to talk to you and Axel and Karl, but you’ve refused to see us. Why is that?
Our lawyer, Axel Brandt said. He advised us against speaking with anyone.
Given the circumstances, my father said, I think the least you could have done was to have agreed to see us.
I wanted to, but . . . Mr. Brandt didn’t finish. Instead he cast an accusing glare at his wife.
I saw no reason, Julia Brandt said. Karl didn’t hurt your daughter. Nor did he impregnate her. Nor, despite speculation to the contrary, did he ever intend to marry her.
And how do you know all this, Julia? My mother stood up from the piano bench. You’re privy to Karl’s every action and every thought?
I know my son.
I thought I knew my daughter.
We all know about your daughter, don’t we?
I beg your pardon?
She’s had her eye on Karl for a long time. Why do you think she got herself pregnant?
Julia, Mr. Brandt said horrified.
It needs to be said, Axel. Ariel got herself pregnant in order to force Karl into a marriage he didn’t want. None of us wanted. The truth, Ruth, is that we would never have allowed such a union.
Julia, will you just shut up, Mr. Brandt said.
My mother said quietly, And why would you have objected, Julia?
What kind of family would Karl have married into? Look at the risk, Mrs. Brandt replied. Just look at your children, Ruth. A girl with a harelip. A son with a stutter. Another son wild as an Indian. What kind of children would Ariel have produced?
Nathan, Ruth, I’m sorry, Axel Brandt said. He strode across the room and grabbed his wife’s arm. Julia, I’m taking you home now.
Just a minute, Axel, my mother said with unnerving calm. Julia, that horse you’re on is pretty high. But I remember when you were the daughter of a drunkard who fixed other people’s automobiles. And everyone in this town knew you had your eye on Axel, and we’ve all done the calculations regarding your marriage and the birth of your son so don’t you say one more word to me about Ariel’s condition, you of all people.
I’m not going to stand here and listen to this. Axel, Julia Brandt said and spun away from my mother.
Whatever it is you’re hiding, Julia, I’ll find out, my mother said to the woman’s back.
Axel Brandt mumbled more apologies and followed his wife out the front door.
A great quiet was left in their wake, the kind I imagined that might have fallen on a battlefield after the guns had been silenced. We all stood looking at the screen door.
Well, my mother finally said brightly, I think we should be grateful to whomever it was that flushed out the Brandts.
My father turned to her. Flushed out? Ruth, they’re not quails we’re hoping to shoot.
No, but they are adults and they should be accepting responsibility.
Responsibility for what? We don’t know anything for certain.
Don’t you feel it, Nathan? There’s something they’re holding back, something they know and aren’t telling.
The only thing I feel is great dismay at how the Brandts are being treated by the people of this town.
That’s because you didn’t grow up here. The Brandts have always sidestepped responsibility for their trespasses and everyone in this town knows it. But not this time.
My father looked truly distressed. How can I help you let go of this anger, Ruth?
I suppose you could pray for me, Nathan. Isn’t that what you do best?
Ruth, God isn’t—
If you mention God to me one more time, I’ll leave you, I swear I will.
Now my father looked startled as if she’d struck him with her fist and he held out empty hands, offering her nothing. I don’t know how to do that, Ruth. For me, God is at the heart of everything.
Mother walked past him to the telephone, lifted the receiver, and dialed. Dad, she said, it’s Ruth. I wonder if I could stay with you and Liz for a while. No, just until . . . well for a while. No, Dad, everything’s fine. And, yes, I could use a ride, the sooner the better.
She hung up and the room was a fist of silence.